Disclaimer: I don't own it. I'm a neuroscience nerd, not a video game creator. Mild warning for implied romance. Enjoy, and please drop me a review if you liked it.

-(i love you with) All My Heart-

Roxas knows that this can't be exactly what they say, this "heartless" thing.

He knows because for all of Xemnas' pontifications about how they can't feel and don't have hearts, not the sugar-spun pink things and not the misshapen pumping muscles, and all they know and all they feel is the desire to retrieve them by any means possible, he did once bother to ask Number VI for a book on neurology.

They can't be missing their amygdalae, can they? That's just silly. They lost their hearts, their physical and philosophical hearts, not little sections of their brains.

Roxas knows—

–and when he presses his fingers into Number VIII's wrist where the cold blue vein is, he knows he doesn't feel a pulse–

–that emotion is created by action potentials that fizz through the brain, neurotransmitters jumping across synapses to and from the amygdala and connecting with the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex, and coinciding with perceptions from sensory neurons through the brain stem and the thalamus. He knows that emotion is just an integral part of cognition, and that cognition is nothing but sparks running along neurons and jumping across synapses.

—and when he watches the sugar-pink cordate auras float out of the shadowed monsters, he knows that Kingdom Hearts is piecing itself together—

Roxas knows that he doesn't have a pulse, but sometimes – when his fingers trail over hot skin and his breath catches in his throat and he knows that his neurons are firing like crazy – sometimes – sometimes he knows that maybe he doesn't have a pulse, maybe he doesn't have a heart, but maybe he isn't missing his amygdala.

Maybe they can feel, deep in the science at their cores.

Maybe he can love.

-I Love You With (all my amygdala)-